


Skeletons and Zombies (Going to be rewritten because frankly it's kinda bad right now and I should be able to make it better)

by SpiritOfErebus



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Zombies, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Quantum Mechanics, Time Travel, Zombie Apocalypse, i am terrible at tags
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-28
Updated: 2020-06-08
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:48:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 17
Words: 16,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22945045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SpiritOfErebus/pseuds/SpiritOfErebus
Summary: You were a typical college student in California, studying Engineering. However, all of your plans get thrown out the window when zombies arise in the west. Soon, everybody you know is dead, and you are running out of supplies. Things were going bad for you until you meet another survivor in a gas mask.
Comments: 14
Kudos: 66





	1. Chapter 1

Greetings, young travelers!

It seems that you have come here looking for a story!

Well, you're in luck!

Enjoy the ride (while it still lasts)


	2. Getting Canned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the main character ends up getting dunked on by a soup can, of all things.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Violence

Oh, boy.  
It was a great day outside.  
The birds were singing, the flowers were blooming, the undead were shambling around…  
It was simply a perfect day to be alive in Ever since some scientists began the search for immortality and messed up royally, the world was doomed. It started with a tiny anomaly. After one failed test was dumped away, nobody noticed that the corpse’s fingers were twitching even after the body was cold. Soon, it got up and left, much to the scientist’s confusion.  
And infected everybody in Las Vegas with whatever disease it had. That turned everybody into walking, groaning, shrieking, violent, bloodthirsty messes.  
And you were here, out in California, trying to walk all the way to the east coast where there were hopefully fewer zombies  
Pistol in hand, hatchet on the back, cameo jacket on and armguards decked out, you trudged on through the city. After climbing over a mountain ridge, You were out of supplies.  
Well goddamnit. You had to go to raid a supermarket now. And supermarkets were where there were the most zombies, where desperately looting people were mauled by the rotting abominations and assimilated into their ranks. That was where you had to go now.  
It was breaking down the door and raid the place or starve. There wasn’t really a choice, was there?  
Hefting the ax in your hand, you bought it down onto the handle. The dilapidated wood shattered with a dull clunk (it was moldy, after all.), and slowly, you stepped into the dark and damp place.  
It was a horrid sight. Corpses in varying stages of decay lay on the tiled floors, flies buzzing around their bloodied abdomen and limbs. The bones were showing on some of those bodies, maggots crawling in and out of crevasses of unknown origin.  
You walked to the canned foods section. The tins of what might have been edible lay on the floor, smashed open(judging by the dents on the edges of the metal shelves), and open and contents staining the floor. What in this day and age could muster the intelligence to open the cans?  
After turning the corner, you found the culprit.  
A humanoid figure, lying on the floor, was silently looking over another can.  
This is, what you called, an infected.  
Yep, infected. But not yet dead. Humans took a while to die of this new disease and during the process of dying, they would become beings like these. Not quite dead, not quite alive. Intelligent enough to use basic tools, but not intelligent enough to know how to turn a knob on a door.  
Then, you made a terrible mistake. While slowly backing away, you tripped on one of the cans.  
The clattering sound echoed throughout the place. Picking yourself up, you realized that you had, indeed, screwed up.  
The dull blue eyes of the infected gazed at her, watching your breath, watching you twitch and stare in horror.  
Then, a scream pierced the air. With a sudden movement, the infected stood up and pounced at her. You got up and ran.  
The scream did not just chill you to the bone. It also awoke the other hidden dangers of the city. Within the streets, other humanoid figures began to cast shadows in the daylight. Echoing the scream, the call to attack, the call of there being fresh meat in the area spread throughout the city.  
And soon, the whole place was awake. Hobbling out of the dark alleys that they resided in during the day, the zombies appeared. They flooded the streets and turned their grey, unblinking eyes around, looking for the intruder.  
It was quite smart, actually. Unlike the brainless creatures they were rumored to be, they functioned similarly to a wolf pack.  
And the human, standing over the infected you had beheaded, realized that.  
“Holy crap.” You muttered. This was the first time you had seen a zombie horde in action.  
Out of a storage closet shambled five other zombies. Dressed in uniforms, they were clearly the staff of the store before it got mobbed and torn apart by desperate humans and hungry undead. There was no way you were going to be able to beat five of them at once.  
Your outside, then realized you should have taken your chances inside. The streets were littered with the rotting forms of your predators.  
Hefting your hatchet, your life flashed before your eyes. Your Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. Your parents. Your friends. Your hobbies. All of it would end now. Soon, you would either be a shambling corpse or a dead corpse, vital organs pilfered from you to feed your killers.  
Still, you would not go down without a fight. Swinging your ax at the approaching zombies as you used to swing your softball bat, knocking them back and scoring a hit across their chest. But there was no killing them without chopping their limbs off, severing their spine, or decapitating them, your paramedic friend told you before getting jumped on by an infected.  
The horde was upon her. No matter how you tried to ward them away, there was always more to take their place.  
Your ax’s wooden shaft broke over some creature’s skull. You took out your pistol and emptied the cartridge unthinkingly into the mass of approaching abominations. Death was inevitable now. You collapsed and burrowed your head into your arms, sobbing slightly.  
You waited for the claws of the zombies to tear off your flesh, to rip you limb from limb into a bloody mess on the pavement.  
Any moment now…  
Five seconds passed. The sound of bodies falling to the ground met your ears instead.  
You were… not dead?  
You looked up in shock.  
A hooded figure stood behind her, one gloved hand raised and pointed to the zombies. Some white projectile whizzed through the air and embedding themselves into the zombie’s heads.  
“you all right?” a baritone voice asked.  
Just then, a screaming infected broke the ranks of the undead, jumping onto the back of the figure. It turned suddenly, snapped his fingers, and a white beam flashed out of nowhere, somehow instantly vaporizing the airborne assailant.  
“What the hell…” you muttered.  
“there’s no time for banter. this is working me down to the bone.” the voice muttered.  
Grabbing Your Arm, he snapped again, and you were falling, falling, falling…  
Eventually, you landed onto something resembling concrete. After that surreal experience, you lay flat on the surface you were on and thought.  
You messed up badly in a post-apocalyptic world. You were surrounded by zombies.  
But somebody helped her. And, most shockingly, you weren't dead.  
Dazed, you gave up on your grip on reality and fell into the black void of unconsciousness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> How are you all liking this so far? Please give a comment! Thanks!


	3. A Survivor sans Flesh

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Business as usual. Nothing much to warn y'all about.

There was a breeze blowing on your face. You wrinkled your nose in slight discomfort.  
And after waking into the world of the living, you realized you had a hell of a backache.  
“Where in the world am I?” you muttered.  
You opened Your eyes to see a beautiful night sky. Standing up, you realized that you were on a rooftop on some building. Heading over to the short walls built on the edge, you leaned down and gazed onto the streets.  
The streets. Oh god.  
Recollection of last afternoon’s events flashed through your mind. A can. Zombies. A voice. A white blast coming out of nowhere. And falling, falling downwards, into what felt like an empty pit.  
Just then, you realized you heard something growling at you from right behind your ear.  
You turned around suddenly and saw….  
What was that thing?  
Was it a tiny dragon skull? How in the world did that even make sense?  
There were white pinpricks of light in its sockets. It had small teeth, tiny horns, and it looked like it was gazing at you in a very sentient manner. And, in your slightly dazed state, you managed to stare at the strange creature with only mild confusion.  
After somehow deeming you as harmless, it floated-wait, floated(?)- away and returned to a figure lying on a ventilation shaft.  
He, you realized, was the hooded figure from the last afternoon. Well, you could only assume that because of his incredibly deep voice. Something seemed odd about him.  
For starters, his figure was incredibly small. He could not have been five feet tall, four feet six at most, and he was wearing a ridiculously large blue hoodie. It clung off of his figure loosely, and it seems as if he were nothing but skin and bone there. Then, there was the fact that he did not show an inch of skin. He wore leather boots with white fluffy trim on the end and long cargo pants that were tucked into his boots. Underneath the hoodie was a grey cashmere sweater, with what looked like bloodstains on it. It wasn’t that odd, given that they were living in an apocalypse. He wore a gas mask, but did not seem like a soldier. He was too short, after all. Oddly, one of his jacket pockets held a glass bottle of ketchup(that was still full) and some sort of flip phone, not that there was cell reception these days.  
One of the dragon skull-like things nudged him, and he woke up, sitting up and rubbing at where his eyes should be. After stretching and taking a drink of the ketchup(which you grimaced a little at), he woke up and looked around.  
“Uh.. hi?” you said awkwardly.  
“oh. heya. you’re awake, huh?”  
“Well, yes,” you said.  
“k. want some food?”, he said.  
“Uh, you don’t seem to be carrying anything.”  
“watch this,” he said and winked(audibly, somehow).  
He snapped his fingers, and with a loud pop, a hot dog appeared, suspended in a blue glow.  
“How did you even do that?” you asked.  
He put his hands in his pocket and shrugged. “a magician never reveals his secrets.”  
You had nothing to say to that. Taking the hot dog, it was surprisingly warm and greasy for a summoned piece of nourishment. After looking at it for a while and taking note that it was not zombie flesh, you ate it.  
“Where do you even get pork these days. And don’t say “magic”.”  
“it’s not pork.”  
The food in your mouth suddenly tasted like dust for a bit. Was it actually zombie flesh?  
“it’s from a typha plant. cattails. they just taste purr-fect after you grill ‘em”  
Well, it was a plant. And last you checked, there were no zombified plants shambling about.  
The food returned to its original taste.  
“Anyways, thanks for rescuing me and giving you food.”  
“It’s fine. No skin off my nose.”  
He chuckled, as if laughing at some secret joke, then abruptly stopped. After some indistinct muttering, he recollected himself.  
“welp, rescuing you and getting up here filled my action quota for the week. ima take a nap. wake me if you’re about to die, ok?  
The figure laid down again, hands behind his head and sighed, settling for a nap. Immediately, he started snoring. Somehow, z’s made of whtie smoke floated up from his face, most likely purely for show or irritation. The gaster blasters lay down on the figure’s stomach and started purring. How adorable.  
Sitting on the ground, looking at the stars, you reflected on your situation. Stuck in the middle of a small city in california, with at least two years of walking ahead of you if you wanted to get to the east coast, where the pentagon and the military still might be holding out against the hordes. It’s been two months now since you started your walk from San Francisco. After getting your car stolen at gunpoint, you managed to steal one of your mugger’s pistols. Sleeping on trees and scavenging for food, you made it all the way here, only to get dunked by a can, and get saved by a freaking magician in a gas mask.  
Considering the zombies and all that, it wasn’t that strange after all.  
Still, with a mysterious partner now, you have no idea where your life will be headed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean, we can let sans’ identity be hidden for a while.  
> After all, the reader would freak out if they got to the bare bones of the situation.  
> Shoot comments and questions down at the comment section or email classicalgamin453@gmail.com.  
> Note: not writing anything that goes beyond platonic relationships, but events that happen beyond that range will certainly be implied.  
> Be prepared for some science next chapter.


	4. Changing Winds (A Scientific Explanation)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we get a peek about how mutants came to be

Near the dusty hills of the Santa Susana lab in Los Angeles, a scientist fell from a building, mauled from behind by none other than zombies. The zombified guards, still in their infected stage, growled viciously and tore at another corpse’s flesh, ripping the muscle fibers and fat off and stuffing it into their orifice. The maintenance crew, sent to repair this radioactive building, were trapped there and held out for a month. After experiencing starvation and eventually dehydration(there was only so much you could drink from nuclear waste containment pools before the radiation got to you), the zombies broke through the gate.  
In the bodies of the guards in the infected stage, the bacteria and parasites experienced a paradigm shift in their DNA. Perhaps it was radiation. Perhaps it was random chance. But the protists in their brain and blood experienced some change that bought self-preservation back into the systems of the medulla oblongata. Ridden with thirst, one infected guard stumbled into a nuclear waste containment pool, desperate for the clear liquid that lay at the bottom. With the introduction of so much more gamma rays and energy into the body, the broken rules of biology were twisted in the host. Some cells quickly became cancerous, refusing to die and replicating fast. Yet, with the strong presence of bacteria that causes necrotizing fasciitis, the cells that grew into body cavities were quickly killed and pumped along into the bloodstream.  
With nowhere to grow, the cancer cells grow outwards. For a few days, nothing odd happened. The infected guard had managed to crawl out of the crevice. Then, the physique of the zombie began to change. Black bulges began sprouting out of its arms and legs, and a shade of black began spreading across their skin. Soon, all of their body looked like it was an oozing black mess.  
The parasite coexisting with the host had mutated due to the ionized particles to encourage the spread of cancer. This addition of tissue made the zombie faster, stronger, and more importantly…  
The infected was able to say alive, and intelligent.  
...  
The abomination turned a doorknob, a black goo slowly dripping from its limbs.  
The survivor hefted a machete, looking at that thing with fear.  
“Meat…” the mutant muttered.  
Then, they pounced. They bit one arm and tore off the other, consuming it. The black goo trickled in from the wound of the survivor, sending a black streak throughout the survivor’s veins.  
The survivor slowly bled out as the abomination left, throwing away the mangled limb.  
The limb turned black and its fingers slowly twitched.  
A few days later, an infected with black goo slowly trickling out from an orifice turned the doorknob and shambled out. Moments later, a black hand floundered and flopped out of the room.  
It was spreading. A new wave was rising.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wonder how one can kill one of these guys.  
> The science in this is something I just made to sound legit.  
> After all, shadiness is part of my name. (Erebus = god of darkness and chaos)  
> Well after posting this for about 5 minutes I got a kudos. Thank you! I have no idea why you did that but I appericiate it. It would be nice if I had a comment, but you take what you can get.


	5. Disrupting Spacetime and Defying Biology

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Spooky Scary Skeletons.....

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Violence

It was morning. A red sun rose from the horizon, painting the grey city with a shade of orange. Crows flew around, picking on the zombified flesh. A few moments later, the crows fell from the sky, scarlet blood flowing out of their eyes.  
Zombie flesh was poisonous.  
You woke up as the sun rose. These days, your biological clock was surprisingly accurate.  
The magician was still sleeping. There z’s made of white smoke still were popping into the air. The blasters, however, looked annoyed and were nudging him.  
Eventually, with the two blasters’ perpetual nagging, he woke up.  
“mmm... what time is it, bro?”  
Reaching into his pocket, he took a sip of ketchup and sat up.  
“oh come on, it’s sunrise? come on, guys. you know a lazybones like me needs sleep.”  
More whimpering was heard.  
“you want us to get going? ugh, fine.”  
A few growls were directed towards the magician.  
“not so soon? what do you mean? oh, yeah. i forgot about that.”  
He sat down and stretched, then looked over the edge of the building. The zombies started to move towards the shadows, obviously annoyed by the sunlight.  
“Uh, excuse me?” you asked, the one-sided conversation confusing you.  
“yeah?” the magician replied.  
“What do you mean by get going? The building is probably swamped with zombies and there is no other way down.”  
“trade secret.” he said, finger gunning you with an air of casualness that made you feel at ease.  
Suddenly, he stiffened.  
“what the…” he muttered.  
The basters growled and spun around, eye sockets black save for a glowing blue ring in their left socket.  
“there are corrupted souls out here. how’d that even happen?” he muttered.  
You looked over the edge.  
“There!” you shouted, pointing at one of the streets.  
Something you never saw before shambed onto the streets. It looked like a zombie, but it left behind a trail of black gunk and it was much bigger.  
The zombie suddenly turned its head and looked directly at you. Letting out a piercing shriek, it started running.  
Ten other beings like it followed it.  
After it reached the building you were situated on, the blobs reached out with their appendages and began to scale the walls, reaching for rusty porch rails or window bars. They climbed in an ape-like fashion, taking advantage of longer limbs to approach you.  
The magician leaned over the edge and snapped his fingers. One of the two blasters floated over and, after charging up for an attack, fired a hot beam of white energy at one of the blobs. It fell off of the building, an arm severed from its main body. Black blood spilled onto the streets, but it got back up and started to climb, at a much slower pace but still climbing. Another blast was fired. A blob fell onto the concrete, but it also got up and began climbing, despite being voided of the left half of their body.  
“this… cannot be a good sign.” he muttered.  
Then, he grabbed your arm and you felt like you were falling through empty space again.  
“What the-”you stuttered.  
With a slight thump, you fell back onto the ground. Somehow, you were on wet grass now. Looking at the edge of the horizon, you saw the edge of a city separated from this forest by a small patch of desert.  
“What? How?” you asked.  
“again, a magician never reveals his secrets.” the magician said.  
Then, he promptly collapsed.  
You climbed a tree and started lounging on a branch.  
“Why is it that every time you save me from a life-threatening situation you always give me more questions to ask?”  
“i’m a magician. the air of mystery is almost half my constitution.”  
“What about the other half?”  
“nightmares and a monstrosity, though you wouldn’t understand”  
“Understand what?”  
“let’s just say i got fast running away from my responsibilities and strong by bench pressing the weight of my sins.”  
Oh boy. That sounded like a typical reformed villain introduction in the dungeons and dragons games you loved to play. If killing zombies was as easy as rolling a dice with a couple other fantasy nerds, you would have been a zombie hunter by now.  
“Anyways, why do you keep on saving me?”  
“couldn’t leave a pal out there to die, could i? also, tibia honest, you are taking near death experiences much better than most of the people i know.”  
“Well, you get used to it.”  
He sat up and nodded.  
“welp, time for another nap. you gotta defend me this time. i don’t have any more magic in me.”  
“What do you mean no more magic?”  
“well, if i could take those shortcuts all day long, why would i be out here? i would just get to the lab equipment i need and get out of here.”  
“What do you mean by shortcut?”  
“you don’t know, you just took one. Yanno, falling through the void and all that.”  
“Wait, so when I was taking those “shortcuts” I was actually falling through a void?”  
“yup. you’re not going crazy. Normally they would be much smoother but now that i’m slowly depleting my magic reserves, i have to put traveling over customer service. And, for the person that’s supposed to guard me, you sure do ask a lot of questions.”  
“Why not have the blasters guard you?”  
“they run on my power. so, they’re good to scout around and keep me company but when it comes to guarding me when i’m exhausted, the best they can do is distract the zombies or push them away. they still can attack, since i put a bit of extra magic once into them to make them slightly more separate beings. but they probably won’t be able to vaporize a horde of zombies. they can each take out a dozen, at max, before running out of magic.”  
“That’s still pretty impressive.”  
“thanks, i try.”  
The conversation about his magic ended. The sun was up now, and zombies would be laying low. All would be fine, you had a spacetime distorting, teleporting magician with magical pets on your side, and it was a nice day outside. Settling into the tree, you prepared to relax.  
“Hands up!” said somebody.  
You turned around.  
Five figures in green clothing and wearing black bandannas emerged, holding out pistols and with axes strapped to their back.  
Why does this keep happening?  
You just got away from a bunch of zombies, and now you get surrounded by bandits. Just great.  
“Get down from the tree!” they shouted.  
You prepared to jump off of the tree.  
“And no sudden movements!”  
Damn. There goes the plan of ducking behind the tree.  
You slowly climbed down the tree, and looked at the patch of grass that the magician was supposed to be on.  
He was gone.  
“heya. don’t you think interrupting somebody’s nap is a bit rude?”  
The bandits turned and looked at the source of the voice.  
And the magician was there, and somehow, floating in mid air.   
“Who the hell are you?” somebody shouted.  
“why are you asking someone random you meet who they really are? that’s a bit more existential than I can handle at the moment, thank you very much.”  
“Boys, let’s shoot him full of holes!”  
The bandits aimed at the figure and fired. The gunshots rang in your ears, and you closed your eyes. That was it. The magician was out of magic. How was he supposed to dodge this?  
“didya think i would just stand there and take it?”  
You opened your eyes again, and you saw five tiny objects, presumably bullets, suspended in a blue glow.  
He dropped to the ground, legs shaking slightly. Turns out exhaustion was still wearing him out. Still, holding out his hand, he summoned what seemed to be a white sword into his hand.  
“So you want to fight hand to hand, huh?” a bandit said.  
“well, if i were you, i wouldn’t be axe-ing any questions. behind you.”  
They turned, and saw the two blasters. Their sockets were pitch black and a white orb gathered in their maw.   
“What the hell are those things?” a bandit muttered.  
The blasters fired. White beams of pure, hot energy spewed out of their mouths. The bandits blocked with their axes, but were still blown off the tree and onto the ground. Their axes were now molten hunks of metal.  
“Get him!”  
The bandits surrounded the magician.  
This was not going to be good. You hid yourself in a tree, hoping that after the magician went down, they wouldn’t be able to find you.  
“Good luck…” you muttered.  
The attack began. One bandit swung at his head and another at his legs. The magician parried one of the blows with his sword, and a blaster bit the shaft of the axe striking his legs, halting the blow. The magician raised his other hand.  
Bones shot out of the ground and impaled two bandits, killing them instantly. The other blaster fired at the back of another bandit, leaving a bloody, circular hole through his body.  
The two remaining bandits stared in shock, and started swinging their axes in desperation. The magician somehow dodged the onslaught and parried their strikes. Soon, one of the bandits were impaled on the sword.  
The magician held out his hand again, and the bandit was enveloped in a blue glow.  
“What the hell are you?” he shouted, flailing around uselessly.  
The magician gave no reply, only bringing his sword up.  
An axe was thrown at the magician’s face. The magician stumbled backwards in shock, but was still struck by the blow. The blade left a mark across his gas mask, and he fell backwards.  
The bandit got up, and picked up his axe. Then, the bandit ran towards the magician, axe raised.  
Only to receive another white beam to the face.  
His headless corpse fell onto its knees, letting go of its axe.  
“get dunked on…” the magician said, before he fainted, head tilting to the sides and outstretched hand falling limp to the ground.  
You jumped town from the tree and dashed towards him.  
The situation was bad. A deep gash ran across his gas mask. How bad would the damage be to his face?  
You took off the mask, and gasped.  
Instead of the bloody face you anticipated, what met your eyes was bone. A skull, with blank eye sockets.  
“What the hell…” you muttered.  
Taking off a glove to get a look at the rest of his body, you saw a skeletal hand.  
“Holy…” you whispered.  
The magician was a skeleton.  
A freaking skeleton.  
What. The. Heck?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That discovery certainly rattled the reader.  
> What happens now?  
> I wonder.


	6. How do you heal something... That's already dead?

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where you drag a skeleton along and fight some mutants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Minor gore and violence. Nothing too bad. ;)

Sitting in the middle of nowhere, besides an unconscious skeleton, you contemplated your life choices.  
Why was life like this? You get into the midst of a horde of zombies by tripping on a can, then you get saved by a stranger. After that, get mobbed by mutants and that stranger teleports randomly into a midst of bandits. And you find out that he’s a skeleton, of all things!  
Goddamnit!  
It was approaching noon, and the sun blazed down at you. Luckily you were in the shade. So far nothing but the occasional squirrel bothered you. You had long since dragged the skeleton away from the bandits(whose corpses were still smoking in the distance).  
Wait a second…  
Corpses… Smoking…  
The smell of rotten flesh could only attract more trouble: zombies, and possibly the mutants. Now, you know you had to get out of there. Not only because one member of your party is unconscious and the mutants are unkillable, but also because you have no weapons. Your pistol and hatchet were left in the middle of the streets after you shortcutted away.  
You were never the most athletic (Hey, studying engineering doesn't exactly require any physical prowess other than being able to subside on nothing but coffee for 72 hours), but you had to get out of here.  
After working around with solutions, your answer to the problem was to drag him along.  
“It’s not like he has skin that can bruise.” you reasoned.  
Taking a hold of his hood, you dragged him along. Hopefully he won’t mind his hoodie getting grass stains all over them. His blasters trailed after him, occasionally whimpering and nudging him, acting like adorable pomeranian dogs.  
Walking for a minute in the opposite direction of the city, you managed to convince yourself that this walk in the woods would be easy.  
~~~~~  
You were really regretting your decision to walk the whole way now. There was now a tear in his hood, and you dragged him along with a sleeve. He was still comatose, and to make things worse, the blasters fell asleep on the magician, increasing the weight you had to pull.  
Finally, in the distance, you saw a small cabin, right beside a river. You dragged the magician over to the hut and prepared to open the door. But, not before getting a fairly sturdy stick as a weapon.  
You opened the door…  
And saw a mutant devouring an old lumberjack. A wood axe stuck out from the abomination’s shoulder. You saw it raise the struggling lumberjack, who was already missing an arm, and, mouth opening impossibly wide, swallowed the man’s head.  
You quickly closed the door.  
Oh crap. What were you going to do now?  
“what did you get us into, kiddo?”  
You turned around. The magician finally woke up. His pets flew around his head, nudging him and growling, then flying to the cabin and back.  
“danger? in the cabin?” he said.  
The blasters bobbed in midair.  
“fine.”  
He stood up and, hands in pockets, walked over to the cabin.  
The cabin’s doors burst open, and the mutant rushed at him. He sidestepped the lunge, and dodged a swipe from a very muscular arm. From the cabin floundered the lumberjack’s dead body, missing half of its brain. It turned, saw me with its remaining eye, and screamed, charging at me.  
You threw the stick at it, somehow nailing it straight in the brain. Grey fluids oozed out from the new wounds and the lumberjack staggered around, disoriented. You picked up a rock, and threw it at the lumberjack again. It hit the torso this time. It managed to collect itself and look at you.  
“That was a big mistake.” you muttered. If you had your pistol, you could probably take them down.  
Meanwhile, the skeleton/magician sidestepped another punch and conjured up a bone, which embedded itself into its toroso. The abomination screamed in annoyance and punched again.  
Sidestepped. The skeleton then conjured up a bone sword and swuing it through the beast. It was cleaved in half, but the upper half began crawling to the skeleton. Bringing his sword down, he impaled the mutant to the ground with his sword. The body flailed its arms about, but the main threat was gone. The bottom half of the mutant kicked about until it fell into the river.  
The lumberjack finally found you through its vision, though you were staring in horrid fascination at the bottom half of the mutant. It shambled towards you through the trees, unnoticed by you.   
“Aargh!”   
You spun around. The zombie, grey goo oozing from its skull raised up both of its arms, prepared to strike you down.  
Suddenly, he was surrounded by a blue glow and lifted upwards.  
You turned and saw the skeleton holding up his hands, leather gloves covered in a blue glow.  
He swished his hand through the air, and the corpse followed. It was plowed through trees, slammed into boulders, and impaled on many branches before it was finally ripped into shreds.  
“Why didn’t you just do this with the bandits?” you asked.  
“i mean, it only works on one person at a time. i was feeling a bit blue then too, didn’t want to make my mood worse.”  
You facepalmed.  
“Go sleep. You’re still clearly exhausted. But tomorrow, you’re gonna give me answers on how you’re apparently a skeleton.”   
“wait, what?”  
“Yes, you’re not wearing your mask.”  
“Damn. tibia honest i thought this day would never come. To patella the truth, though, i still really appreciate the offered nap. I’ve worked myself down to the bone. Now, if you’ll excuse me, i’ll be in a tree, skulking around.”  
He walked to the trees, somehow climbed it in two seconds, and began snoring, smoky white z’s appearing in the air again.  
Well, at least now you didn’t have a comatose skeleton to worry about.  
“After that nap, you’re gonna give me an explanation!” you shouted at his supposedly sleeping form.  
You expected the silence that came afterwards, and stood beneath the tree awkwardly.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Time to draft up a backstory for sans' journey! Woohoo!  
> Update is going to be Friday(hopefully, assuming I don't procrastinate)


	7. Corrupted Souls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where answers are given, and a new plan is set in motion.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have fun reading! =)

“So, let me get this straight. You’re a magical, time manipulating, teleporting magical skeleton who is named after COMIC SANS from a society of monsters who were banished under the earth six hundred years ago?”

“that pretty much covers it. also, you left out the part about getting drunk on ketchup.”

After a crazy speech from Sans, your whole view of the world was changed forever.

“And you’re trying to find lab equipment to build a time machine?”

“close enough.”

“And you have NINE phd’s?”

“yup.”

“How do you even get phd’s underground?”

“i just put my backbone into things. no big deal.”

You sighed, and relaxed against the tree trunk. Sans had formed some sort of bone cage around them, keeping them safe from zombies for the night. A fire was lit after one of Sans’ blasters fired a laser a pile of firewood.

Still, his existence was making your head spin. Monsters. Magic. Souls.

“Well, how are you alive? I mean, being a skeleton and all that.”

“i mean, it’s not like i’m a being made of magic. form doesn’t affect us much, but it can influence the magic that we use.”

“What I wanted to ask was, how do you eat? How do you function as a being made of magic?”

“our food is also made of magic. you don’t need a gut to eat it. and as to how us beings made of magic function…”

He wriggled his fingers in the air.

“magic.” he said.

You sighed. He has been deflecting questions for the past hour during his storytelling by saying “magic” to all of them. Including teleportation, how gaster blasters are alive, bone summoning, and souls.

“but there is something you should know. these new zombies aren't dead.”

“What do you mean not dead?”

“if they died, their souls should have shattered. these souls exist in a corrupted state. If you could see souls, you would see that there are black splotches and the color starts to fade to grey.”

“Souls have color, too?”

“yup. yours is purple.”

“Does that even mean anything?”

“purple signifies perseverance. it’s close to determination, but not quite. still, it’s not soul-ly your unique trait. about 1 in 7 people have purple souls.”

“Oh.”

Then, your nerdy side got the better of you. This was a whole new type of material! Magic! What was it on the molecular level? How strong was it? Does the type of magic matter?

“From a structural engineering point of view, how strong are your bones? Does the type of magic affect the strength? What is it on the molecular level?”

Sans just chuckled for a bit.

“once a purple soul, always a purple soul, huh. we didn’t have any microscopes underground, but if we find one, you can find out. my attacks are pretty weak for a monster, but they still can stop bullets.”

“How do you know? You don’t look like you had a gun.”

“do you want to know how we broke out of our underground prison?”

“Sure.” you said.

“we had to harvest the souls of humans and harness their power to break the barrier holding us in. before you say anything, it was definitely wrong. still, every human that we took down always had committed a level of violence that warranted their death.?”

“You had to kill to get out of the underground? What do you mean committing a level of violence?”

“for your first question, yes we did.”

You slowly inched away from Sans.

“for your second question, i mean murder. every single one of them, except for one, had killed multiple monsters. one of them did this with a gun.”

“What about the one that didn’t kill anybody?”

“they fell into lava.”

“Oh.” you suddenly felt bad for judging the monster race as a whole. Besides, if it were humans trapped underground, they would probably commit worse atrocities.

“that look on your face. you’re feeling bad for judging us, right?”

You sighed, indirectly agreeing with him.

“hey. i won’t judge. this is your first day being introduced to magical teleporting skeletons, after all.”

“Also, why didn’t you absorb the bandit’s souls? They make you more powerful, right?”

“only souls with pure traits can be absorbed. Your soul is actually only primarily perseverance. It’s also made with an undertone of bravery. those bandit souls had faded traits. Absorbing souls with faded or blended traits can overload a monster’s soul, instantly shattering the souls and the host. Only boss monsters are capable of absorbing multiple souls without their souls cracking under the strain of all the additional magic. but even then, they cannot absorb faded or blended souls.”

“Did any other humans with mixed traits fall?”

“no. Ironically, only humans with pure traits could find a reason to climb our mountain, ignoring the legend of “whoever climbs mt. ebbot never returns.”

“That’s pretty interesting. What are boss monsters, by the way?”

You looked at Sans, but he was, somehow, asleep, signature z’s floating into the air, and facepalmed. How rude and immature, to fall asleep in the middle of an important conversation.

You needed answers, goddamnit!

~~~~~

Meanwhile, underground, a certain yellow flower slumped in the clearing, staring at the golden flowers that grew around him.

Nobody had left the underground after finding zombies, though the monsters still went to the other exit to look at the sun and stars they had been denied. Nobody came into the ruins, not even Toriel. They did not want to be reminded of the days without hope.

Yet, ironically, their hope now resided in the monster with the least HoPe: Sans.

When they reached the surface, Sans was the first one to identify the humans as hostile. Revealing his identity as judge and apprentice to the last royal scientist, WD Gaster, he evacuated everybody back into the underground. Then, he set off by himself to find the equipment necessary to build a time machine, of all things. He unveiled an older, broken model and assigned Alphys to work on it.

Flowey was still confused by this decision. Why not just let Frisk reset? Everything would be much easier.

A thud was heard behind him, interrupting his thoughts.

He turned his head. Instead of Frisk, it was another human.

Something was wrong with it. Despite having a soul, it was polluted and grey, with black spots dotting the once pristine soul. Black gunk dropped out of its physical body.

With a cry of fear, Flowey drove vines into the skull of that thing.

What was happening out there? First zombies, then corrupted humans.

A soul floated out of the corpse, and Flowey was fascinated by the level of impurity.

“Oh, what a corrupted soul.” somebody giggled.

Flowey spun around, but it was too late. The thing behind him flew into his body, possessing him. A red smiley face appeared on flowey’s face, and with a demonic grin, it grabbed the soul and absorbed it. Then, it flew out of the poor flower.

Suddenly, Flowey felt something for the first time.

It was exhilarating. After being an empty husk for so long, feeling was such a novel feeling.

And what was the feeling?

Hunger. Overwhelming hunger.

The spirit giggled again, delighted by the corruption of her former partner. Her plan was now in action.

It was time to destroy everybody again by pulling the strings on a new puppet. It was time to get back at the smiley trashbag from stopping her from achieving level 20.

Chara was rising once more, and this time, nothing would stop them.

After all, she had Flowey as a mindless, hungry puppet now. And nobody, not even the comedian, could stop a rampaging god.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> =)  
> "Since when were you the one in control?"  
> -Chara


	8. Tomfoolery

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Sans shows off his magic. Enjoy this mini explanation of magic!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All clear! Nothing to warn y'all about
> 
> BTW every kudos, comment, and hit means so much to me! This is my first fan fiction, after all.

After last night’s lengthy talk, today’s beginning was surprisingly light.

“want some ketchup?” Sans asked.

“Sure.” You said.

He gave the bottle to you. You tipped it over, intending to squeeze a little out of it…

And then the cap slipped open and all of the ketchup was dumped on your meal.

You stared in shock as Sans laughed his skull off.

“oh stars, that’s the second time i got somebody with this bottle!”

Mourning after the loss of your hot dog and the ketchup, you slumped down and sat against a tree.

“you getting upset over me wasting food?” Sans said.

He held out his hand. A greenish cyan glowed in his hands and the ketchup flew off of the ground and the hot dog and went back into the bottle, which capped itself.

“basic repair charm. figured it out myself once after my hoodie was torn.”

You gasped.

“Oh my god magic is amazing! Did any humans use spells like this?”

“uh, no? most of them just stuck to the seven colors of magic.”

“Can I have a demonstration of each?” you asked, interested in seeing what Sans could do.

“well, the type of magic depends on the monster. Most monsters only use green and white magic, but a selected few can use many other types.”

“blue is for attacking things that move, orange is for attacking things that don’t move, green is for healing, deep blue is for moving objects around, yellow is to shoot a concentrated bolt of energy outwards, red is for attacking psychologically, and purple is for restraining your opponent.”

“So, when you mixed deep blue and green, you effectively made the objects clean themselves with healing magic and aided the process with moving them around, right?”

“yep. got inspired by some series called harry potter. a copy of one fell underground.”

“And what do you mean attacking psychologically?”

“i don’t know. only humans can use red magic. Though i would guess that it would mean to make the opponent lose the will to live, since red represents determination in our culture”

“What about yellow magic? Why didn’t you use it during the bandit fight?”

“well, let me show you.”

Sans held out his hand at you and closed his eyes. Yellow gathered in his palms. You prepared to dodge the attack, slightly scared.

The attack came. A ball of shimmering, yellow energy emerged from his palm and inched towards you.

It was really slow. Even a snail could outrun it.

Sans snapped with his other hand, and the magic was sucked back into him.

“you see now? it’s really easy to dodge.”

You nodded.

“Could green magic cure zombification?” you asked.

“I would have done that if I could, but zombification leaves a permanent mark on your soul. You can’t heal those.”

“What would happen if you theoretically tried?”

“i would be facing a perfectly healthy and strong zombie. their body may be healed, but their mentality will never recover. this plague somehow alters your very soul. green magic can strengthen your soul, but it can’t change it.”

Trying to change the topic from corrupted souls, you tried to think of another question.

“What magic can yellow be mixed with?”

“surprisingly, it can be mixed with white magic. my blasters use it.”

Summoning a blaster, his eyes flickered yellow and blue.

“think of the attack as a food. it has a base of white magic, which is the intent to harm. mixing it with yellow would imbed the attack with an urge for justice, adding an effect similar to poison to people with execution points, while the blue magic makes the blast travel faster. and before you ask, if i mixed yellow magic with blue magic directly, it would degrade. think of it like chemistry; you need a buffer between two solutions.”

“That’s … actually pretty insightful. When did you get the time to figure out how to mix magic?”

“most monsters are doing it already, it’s just that we don’t even realize. i was a scientist, so it was kinda my job to screw around with random magic. still, being the only monster who can use yellow magic, this discovery was kind of useless.”

“So, you were special, magic wise?”

He sighed.

“yes. i’m the only monster that can use five different types of colored magic, minus orange and red.”

“Why not orange?”

“i’m too lazy to use orange. it takes an intensity of character that i just don’t have.”

“Yeah. Real surprise. You have the energy drive of a sloth.”

“what is a sloth?”

You facepalmed.

“You don’t know what a sloth is? You are a magical, teleporting skeleton with nine phd’s and advanced knowledge over magic, and you don’t know?”

“i literally lived under a rock. cut me some slack, will you? although, tibia honest, i never really cared about basic animals,” he shrugged, “also, we’re gonna have to delay our daily teleportation. i used a lot of magic back there giving you a demonstration. so, to get going faster, i’m going to need to -”

“Oh. My. God. You are literally so lazy. Don’t say you need a nap.”

“i’m going to have to take a nap.”

“I will hit you.”

“Don’t.” he said.

Then, he teleported onto a very tall tree. The hypocrite, saying you don’t have energy to teleport and then teleporting right after.

“I am so getting you for this when you come down.” you shouted.

“wake me up when this is over…. or not.” he said.

Why couldn’t you have found a skeleton that wasn’t so lazy as a traveling partner?

Oh well, it couldn’t hurt to be lazy for one day, right?

~~~~~

Flowey finished their ascent out of the pit, encouraged by the promise of more souls by the ghost whispering in his ears.

Looking across the landscape, he saw a city.

Laughing crazily, he made his way over.

Chara smirked. This time, her plan of mass genocide would not be foiled by foolish sentiment.

Once Flowey gathered seven corrupted souls, he would lose control over himself, allowing Chara to take over, and finally, erase the comedian once and for all.

Sans was going to die, over and over, for all of the times he had stopped Chara from destroying those useless timelines and gaining control over Frisk’s body.

Oh, the feeling of revenge. It was coursing through Chara’s nonexistent veins, and making her nonexistent heart pound in excitement.

In the distance, on top of a tree, Sans napped peacefully, not knowing of the chaos that would soon ensue and make his life tougher than it was before.

Things, frankly, were going off the rails.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Honestly, I'm thinking that I just wrote Chara as a bundle of psychological problems.  
> Any advice?


	9. Raiding a Lab and Scientifically Analysing Paranomials

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where we have a run in with Sans' old friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello there! I may or may not have been working on a sequel for this!
> 
> That's possibly why the updates are rather slow!
> 
> Have fun reading!

Teleporting into the city, Sans collapsed once again. You were used to this now, and grabbed him by the armpits and dragged him to a safe spot. Summoning a bone sword, Sans shakily stood up, using the weapon as a cane.

“that was another fifty miles.”

“Is fifty miles your max distance in teleporting?”

“yeah. any more than that and i risk running out of magic and leaving myself defenceless.”

“Isn’t your sword magic?”

“it’s just a summon. i made that sword beforehand in case of emergencies.”

Examining you surroundings, you found another nondescript little town. There were no zombies in your immediate line of vision, which was nice. There were no mutants around, either. This just looked like a typical ghost town.

“Why are we here?”

“we’re near one of the testing facilities for lasers. i need some of those for that time machine.”

Nodding, you climbed onto an abandoned van and offered Sans a hand, which he gratefully took. Despite being very powerful, Sans weighed forty pounds at most. 

After struggling with gripping the ledge of the cargo crate, he finally hooked his legs onto a ledge and hoisted himself up. His lack of magic was, frankly, making him more of a hindrance.

Sans closed his eyes.

“there are a couple of zombies in the lab. no weird mutants though.”

“How do you know?”

“just a feeling. i’ve been in mortal danger more times than i can count. my instincts are near perfect.”

“The zombie apocalypse hasn’t been going on for that long.”

“the underground had the potential to be very dangerous.”

“But I thought monsters were civilized towards each other?”

“remember the humans. the one with the gun put up a good fight. i was getting shot by twin revolvers when i sent him to the ghosts for them to deal with. Literally.”

You had a feeling that was’t all that he went through, but you shrugged it off. You were raiding a lab now, goddamn it.

“behind you.” he whispered.

Jumping out of the way, you turned and saw a zombie lunge at where you were seconds ago. Sans dispatched the zombie with a quick diagonal slash across the chest, sending it stumbling backwards. Then, he stabbed the zombie through the head, and pulled his blade out.

“Clear.” he whispered.

Hefting his sword, he severed the hinges and you kicked the door in. After all, you had more momentum behind your kicks. The door collapsed and pinned an approaching zombie, which Sans beheaded. The corpse writhed for a moment before collapsing.

“see the fire axe on the wall? take it.”

Swinging open the cabinet while Sans watches your back, you acquire the fire axe.

“I got it. Let’s move.”

Walking down the lobby, you found that a steel security gate was deployed. However, some bars in the middle were wrenched off. Some black gunk dotted the floor.

“the mutants have been here.” Sans whispered, “but judging by the fact that there are only normal zombies in this lab, the normal zombies must have finished whatever life was here. strange. it’s not like a mutant to turn away from fresh meat, judging from its behavior.”

Suddenly, he tensed.

“stars dammit. it’s here.”

An invisible wind flew past you. Somehow, you could hear childish laughter around you. Hefting your axe, you prepared to bash the life out of any zombie.

“Struggling? Oh, how cute.” A little girl’s voice giggled.

You shivered. Sans’s eye burst into blue flame, and he drew on the last of his magic reserves.

“Now, Comedian, I don’t want to kill you here. I have not yet achieved my final form, and these weak corpses could only possibly zombify your charge here. You’re far too weak to escape with both of your lives now.”

“says the spirit who had tried to kill me time and time again. look at me, still alive and kicking.”

“I always hated your attitude. So determined, so headstrong for one of your kind. Anyways, consider this a little test. I want to see how pathetic you are, struggling against these zombies, before you get squashed once and for all, ripped outside of time and space, after my true form rises. Now, DIE.”

After some demonic cackling, the presence vanished.

“let’s grab the lasers and go.”

You knocked back a zombie and ran into the research institute after Sans.

The lab was underground, and it was huge. There was no light except for Sans’s eyes.

“stars above, i’m going to have to do this.” Sans grumbled.

Holding out his left hand, he summoned a glowing orb. It illuminated about fifteen feet.

Behind you, zombies groaned and shambled after you.

“there’s no way we’re fighting our way out of this. i’m too low on magic to teleport. If we manage to hide down here for a day, i can get us to the next town. that demon probably knew i was after lasers, so we’re going somewhere rural next.”

Looking at the central podium, Sans saw the experimental laser and grabbed it, discarding the glass tubes but keeping the structure that produced the photons. He snapped, and the light he summoned dimmed, but he still managed to scrap the energy together to shove it in his “Dimensional Box”.

Then, smacking a zombie in the face with a sword and looking around, Sans sensed an area free of zombies.

It was a locked storeroom.

“quick, in there.” Sans hissed.

Concentrating, the doorknob glowed blue before the door swung open. The light had faded out completely, and Sans lit his eyes on blue flame once again to provide some illumination.

You rushed in the door and Sans locked it. After sitting in darkness for fifteen minutes, Sans pointed at the ceiling, and the lights flickered on.

“What?”

“magic electricity. i was forced to do this back in the labs underground.” Sans shivered, and scratched his gloved right hand.

You did not want to touch on what seemed to be a touchy subject for Sans.

Outside of the room, zombies snarled and clawed at the walls.

Calming down, you observed the room.

It was a regular storage room, very dusty and hosting a multitude of spider webs. A broken desk was placed in the corner while a large cabinet sat opposite to it.

Sans made another hot dog appear out of mid air, smothered it in ketchup, and ate it. You stared at him and his sloppy eating habits.

“what? it helps with magic regeneration!”

“If I have to deal with ketchup all over the floor for the possible day that we are stuck in here, you’re going to go eat in the cabinet!” You shouted. The constant overuse of ketchup on literally everything was getting to her nerves.

“But if you are going to put ketchup on everything, you’re gonna have to give me information in exchange.”

“you can’t do anything to me and my eating habits.” Sans said, drinking some ketchup to spite you.

“Eww! Yes, I can! And I will literally slap the bottle out of your hands and feed it to the idiots outside!”

“fine. what information do you want?”

“Who… was that thing? You said it tried to kill you many times.”

“oh. that was chara. a ghost of a human that died underground.”

“But don’t you take the soul of every human that falls?”

“chara was… different… at first.”

“Oh? How so?”

“it began like this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Is this fic losing steam? Is the plot dying?
> 
> If so, tell me so I can wrap this up quickly!


	10. A Chara-cter's Backstory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where Sans rants about a bundle of psychological problems without knowing the cause of them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's exactly 1 minor swear word in here that is also known as an alternate name for a donkey. Hopefully that won't be a problem.
> 
> Also, the stuff in parenthesi are there just for clarification of the Undertale "Canon" (in quotes because I just made it up to be funny, serious, and weird (Don't ask about how I achieved it. It's weird.)), and are there for humorous purposes, or if you all are heathens that have not yet been introduced to the beautiful game known as Undertale.
> 
> There was a very obvious mistake that I was glad I caught. Copy pasting can lead to very funny phrases in the resulting text.

(3rd person pov)

Chara was, to be frank, a weird human.

Not only did she climb the mountain on a dare, she also jumped down it to “prove that she was more badass than all of her friends”.

And when Asriel, the son of the royals approached her, she just raised two middle fingers to the sky and shouted in victory.

Deeming that she was mentally unstable, Asriel convinced Chara to go with him.

After arriving, there was confusion because apparently there was a human spy that had hid in the underground and waited to strike the royal family. The carnage was furious. Soldiers were called in, enlisted from the kitchens. Orders to generate more weaponry were signed, and the one lone human faced off against a multitude of monsters. In the end, Chara succeeded in the task of murdering every single one of Toriel’s butterscotch pies. After the battle, a treaty was filed such that only one butterscotch pie could exist at a time to prevent pie fights, and to enforce that treaty, Chara was signed into the royal family.

Being the megalomaniac she was, Chara forcefully made Asriel sign the Treaty of Optimus Amicus (Under the threat of feeding him hay), and made plans to eventually marry into the royal family. Toriel was delighted by the thought of grandchildren. The royal scientist, Doctor W.D. Gaster began to consult a plethora of books on whether humans and monsters were compatible. Asgore had to restrain Toriel from making Chara a princess. After all, Asgore did know of Chara’s not-so-secret plans of world domination.

After a very frightening five years, during which Chara gained more megalomaniac tendencies and attempted to start a spider empire (courtesy of bribing Muffet), she learned that humans could absorb monster souls, and vice versa.

But there was also something that she learned from a certain royal scientist, the same monster who introduced two child skeletons. One was Sans, and the other was Papyrus. Asriel became fast friends with them.

One day, they disappeared after a quake in hotland caused an experiment to go wrong.

Those skeleton children would later emerge again three hundred years into the future. Sans remembered the past due to his participation in more experiments. Papyrus didn’t, though he did have occasional deja vu flashbacks.

Regardless, the important information that Chara learned was that of determination was a physical substance. It was red in color and it was powerful. A human contained a lot of it, and it is the will to live, the will to carry on, the desire to alter fate.

It could heal wounds and resurrect the dead, but at a terrible cost.

Still, if a monster would absorb a human soul, the human would take over unless the monster had been subject to the determination experiments and survived, meaning that it was determined enough to resist the human soul’s inputs.

Moreover, a human with a monster soul (or vice versa) would be incredibly powerful. Maybe even powerful enough for her to start her own religion. However, if it were a human to absorb a monster soul, their power would be capped at that. 

If it were to be done in reverse, though the monster’s power would know no bounds. And if they were not determined enough, Chara would be able to take control. Additionally, Chara’s soul color was a deep scarlet. Pure enough for a monster to absorb without going insane. It was also the embodiment of determination, meaning that it was several hundred times more determined than other human souls. Determined to be better, to win, to defy death. And determined enough to remain in control when other human souls were introduced.

If she were to gather enough, spacetime would be hers to control.

That power… it drove her to convince Asriel to participate in the plan. Though the doctor was later erased from time and space, she was determined enough to resist the effects. Asriel wasn’t and forgot all about the lectures on determination. She died of poisoning, eating buttercup flowers. Asriel absorbed her soul, and she took control.

There was, however, a miscalculation on her parts.

A boss monster’s soul was more powerful than an average monster soul, and contained slightly more base determination. That's why they were more powerful. They had more desire to live, a more intense intent to hurt.

And the monster’s determination allowed Asriel’s kind soul to interfere with her plans. Asriel allowed the humans to attack them, filled with kindness. He was not going to hurt them. He was naive. He thought mercy was applicable in the real world outside their little kingdom.

It was foolish.

The weak died, the strong lived. It was kill or be killed, eat or be eaten.

As their souls shattered, Chara screams internally. She was not going to die here. Not now! Right after she convinced that foolish monster to give her control.

But the funniest thing was, Asriel still believed in her.

He had staggered back into the underground and comforted her as he dusted.

Chara didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at Asriel’s act.

After that, however, her soul transcended death.

Nobody knows how. Perhaps she surpassed the determination threshold by absorbing Asriel’s determination. Perhaps she was just spiteful and hatred was added to the determination. Perhaps, it was just chance.

And now, she was a murderous wraith, biding her time, being trapped in the barrier while searching for an opportunity to resume her plans of world domination. Nobody knows why she even attempted to continue.

She had tried with the yellow-souled human, corrupting his justice into a twisted version of vengeance with the addition of her own soul, nearly massacring everybody with a revolver and several cases of bullets. Almost making it to the barrier to absorb Asgore’s soul(which was weakened via guilt so that it wouldn’t be able to interfere with her control over the new body), she was stopped by that blasted comedian, somehow transcending erasure and dumped into this era. He had defeated her after a long battle and she was forced to let go of the soul of the sixth human.

She had sulked (supposedly, or in the version that Sans was telling, presumably without timeline loops and possessing an individual with slightly less determination) until “somehow” (AKA through a lot of resets, though that went unsaid because Sans didn’t want to cause an existential crisis over varied timelines in his audience) a seventh human came along, didn’t kill any monsters, and freed them all…

Only to emerge into a world of zombies. With all those mutants walking around, Chara was able to direct their corrupted souls into Flowey, a soulless flower with a lot of determination, in order to create her own personal god.

That was the story of Chara’s life as Sans knew it.

~~~~~

(Your POV)

“Well, she is weird.” you said, “I still don’t understand why she focuses so much on world domination.”

“eh, i forgot.”

“Out of ALL the facts that you told me, you neglected to remember her motive? What if we could talk to her or something? She has a soul, right? She has emotions!”

“it's kinda pointless to remember somebody’s motive if you're about to get shot by a revolver. besides, i only know the first part because asriel told me.”

You facepalmed and groaned at Sans's incompetence and apathy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the late chapter. I was on a frantic editing sequence on the sequel that I forgot about the prequel. Silly me.
> 
> Spoilers: The sequel is going to be very long and y'all are gonna have to watch some anime if you want to understand it.
> 
> Don't worry. It'll be an apocalypse fic also, though with a lot more slow burn and fluff before, during, and after.
> 
> (Shameless advertising above. Sorry for not warning y'all. :P _


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Remember that lab where the mutants emerged? Well, our protagonists are going to foray into it!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enjoy the chapter!

After telling funny stories for a while, Sans finally gathered enough power to teleport.

“alright. keep all your limbs within the vehicle, don’t look too deeply into the void, and put on your seatbelt.” Sans said.

You just grabbed his shoulder and braced for teleportation.

The familiar falling sensation came again. This time, though, you thought you saw something in the dark. A cracked white mask. It turned towards you, and the creepy smile on it widened. Before you could investigate more, you fell out of the void and onto a stack of hay.

Sans emerged, swimming out of the hay bale. He had the misfortune of sinking into the bale, considering his slim stature. Flailing wildly, he resolved to use blue magic to make himself float up.

“How come you’re not magically exhausted this time?” You asked.

“this was just thirty miles.” Sans said, slowly descending down to the floor.

You were in a barn. Rusty tools lay on a tool rack, cobwebs stretching between the wooden shafts. A tractor sat on the opposite side of the barn, gathering dust. A bucket of rotten fruit sat near the tractor, with fruit flies flying around it, feeding on the spoiled and shriveled pomegranates.

Pushing a back door open, you saw a field of pomegranate trees. Though they looked more like bushes, they still bore delicious red fruit.

“Come on, Sans! Look at all these pomegranates!” you said with childish glee. It had been so long since you were able to indulge yourself. Pomegranates were always a favorite of yours. That was part of your reason for moving to California.

The bushes also made for a nice view. Lined up neatly, row boy row, the plants filled up a small valley. The sun rose in the distance, casting a beautiful orange hue over the clouds and land. Birds sang around the farm, roosting in a nearby forest.

“this isn’t just a pomegranate grove. it’s also near a research facility, and there’s nobody there.” Sans said, “it’ quite far away, but if we make it there, we might be able to finish the machine ahead of schedule. if only there was some vehicle that ran only on electricity.”

There were certainly none of those in a farm.

“guess we’re going on foot, then.” Sans said.

The next two days would consist of walking. Just walking. Teleportation was not an option because apparently the demon could sense the rips in time and space that he left behind and track them. 

Leaving from the farm after high noon, you walked on the dirt path towards the city. 

Slowly eating the fruits you scavenged, you smiled to yourself. This was going to be easy!

Sans just floated behind you (which you found very unfair, thank you very much), occasionally coming up with fruit and zombie puns to crack you up.

What could go wrong? There were no zombies, the path ahead was clear, and you had a very long road trip ahead of you, which you were actually going to partake under with someone else!

Things were great!

~~~~~

Chara was not pleased.

The comedian had escaped with the fifth potential soul. Flowey, bloated in a corrupted Omega Flowey form, reflected her mood and gurgled unhappily.

Soul collecting was messy business. How did the monsters do it again? Chara’s strategy was just to possess them and mutilate them to the doorstep of death, and let Flowey finish off whatever was left. Most of the times, the souls of the mutants, being the fragile things they are, shattered before their HoPe bar depleted, which confused Chara to no end.

Inside the facility, a plethora of zombies roamed the halls. She and Flowey inhabited the top observation deck, overlooking the landscape around the flat field.

Just then, Flowey almost jumped through the roof in anticipation.

Something was arriving.

Chara floated through the roof and told Flowey to stand down. The abomination trickled into the floors, hiding himself from the potential onlookers. The observation deck was as empty as it began.

It was the military from the east coast. Transport jets and fighter planes flew from the horizon.

Chara cackled.

More souls for the mad god were en route.

The zombies turned their heads at the sound, looking up at what seemed like metal birds flying towards them.

Chara spread her influence on the weak willed soulless corpses, and they shambled back into the lab, waiting for the soldiers to enter the lab.

The soldiers looked at the seemingly abandoned lab and checked their weapons one last time. Who knew what abomination lay in that deathtrap they were supposed to be retaking.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> By the way, thanks for reading this fic! Every kudos, comment, and bookmark means so much!


	12. Outclassed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where the beginning of your end commences.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mild violence. The gaps in the horror and gore can be filled in by your imagination.
> 
> We're approaching 666 hits! Huzzah! And we're approaching 50 kudos!
> 
> (Is it kudoses or kudosi, or is it just kudos when you want to say kudos in plural form?)

Arriving at the lab, Sans noticed that something was wrong.

Very wrong.

“there’s ambient magic in there, along with about thirty souls approaching.”

“Thirty souls approaching? Who in their right mind would approach this mess of zombies?”

“people with orders. soldiers.” Sans said, wincing.

“What do we do now? If Chara’s pet gets the souls, they’re going to become-”

“a god. But now, they’re still a half god, and i’m willing to bet half a dozen bottles of ketchup that chara doesn’t know how to harness the power of the god, meaning that all it would have when it really becomes a god is invulnerability to my attacks. now, we can still kill it. but to stop chara from shoving the soul in another creature…”

“So what do we do?”

“we’re going to have to kill the soldiers first.”

Your stomach turned.

“Are you sure there’s no other way?”

“there is one, but it’s not going to work if i have a sure chance at defeat the god afterwards.”

“What is it?”

“teleporting these people away.”

“You can do that?” You shouted.

“i can draw upon their own intent to not be here and get them back where they came from. However-”

“What’s the drawback?”

“i’m going to be comatose while this is happening and chara can send zombies over to annihilate us.”

“Let’s do it. The less people killed the better.”

“you’re going to have to defend me, a beacon of magic, while a demon possesses a horde of zombies and a god in order to attack you. you sure?”

“Yup.” you said, mentally preparing yourself for the fight. You could envision it. Corpses of scientists, guards, and farmers shambling towards you as a god laughs evilly behind it all.

“Why do you think you can win against this half-god?” you asked.

“easy. i’ve fought him before.” Sans said, shrugging. Then, he took hold of your attire and lifted you and him onto a tall tree.

“ready?”

“As i’ll ever be.” You said.

“take this.” Sans said, handing you his sword, “an axe isn’t exactly the best tool for combat. and for the record, i was going to go with the second plan anyways.”

“Yeah, sure.”

Then, he collapsed, closing his eyes (somehow, without discernible eyelids). Blue smoke rose from his left socket, a tell-tale sign of him using magic. A thin rope of blue laced towards the black dot approaching in the distance.

And with that, the ground trembled.

From the laboratory, something burrowed its way towards your tree. The steel walls of the lab it passed under crumbled and fell over, releasing a crowd of zombies that started staggering and crawling towards your position. The central tower collapsed, the central pillar victim to whatever that thing was.

You hoisted Sans onto your back, and hoped that the jacket he was wearing would be enough to repel the scratches that the zombies would no doubt inflict. You were too much of an amateur with a sword to defend both the front and the back. Using Sans as a human shield (or, to be more precise, a skeleton shield) was a very scummy move on your part, but it was your only choice.

Then, the thing arrived. Tearing through the earth and murdering several trees while popping out of the ground, it sent dirt, sand and various bushes in the airea flying in all directions. Emerging from the dust, you gazed in horror at the abomination that arose.

It was a television screen, with four metal loops around it. Inside of the loops were four hearts, purple(like yours) dotted with black. Some sort of animal head was at the bottom of it between two loops, dripping with black goo that seemed to grow hands and reach for you. It supported itself via vines, gripping onto the tree you were on and on the surrounding foliage. The face in the screen was demonic, a cartoonish flower with a zombie face pasted onto the crude pixel art.

Suddenly, it flashed red, and the pixel art showed a red smiley face surrounded by a black background.

It began its attack.

Vines were flung at your face, and you hacked wildly at it. The vines seemed to recoil at the touch of the sword, smoking purple. It didn’t look like anything physical.

The abomination roared and sent an energy beam into the trunk of the tree. Apparently, it was still capable of strategy. You jumped onto another tree, stabbing the sword into the tree (Because yes, the magic sword was that sharp. It had been able to cleave through those steel hinges, after all.). Another volley of vines were shot, and you swung the sword in an arc to deflect them upwards, where they grabbed weaker branches and pulled, removing the wood from the trunk via brute force and showering you with splinters. Brushing them off, you jumped to the next tree.

“Okay. So the creature can tunnel.” You thought, “ And there will be zombies arriving here soon. Which means that being on the ground right now can bode nothing but trouble. From what the attacks so far have told me, the creature can summon vines and energy beams, which mean that if I can keep on darting from tree to tree-” 

The creature summoned WHITE NINJA STARS and chopped down half the forest. The tree you were on fell, along with half of its cohorts. You jumped off at the last moment, and landed face first on the ground. Sans being the insignificant package (weightwise) that didn’t actually hinder you that much, you ran.

A volley of vines reached for you, and grabbed onto Sans’ jacket. You turned, ready to cut the vines-

Only to realize that they were repelled by some invisible force from the jacket.

“That clever bastard. He must have put blue magic on his jacket to repel attacks.” You thought. You would be safe! With Sans as a shield, you could deflect the vines and run until he finished the teleportation and-

A zombie groaned in front of you. The creature sent a beam of energy at you and you dove away behind a trunk. The zombie was incinerated, and the creature stopped its attack. You sighed in relief. With the zombie horde, the creature couldn’t use any more area attacks, and hopefully it would resort to use vines.

Your victorious hopes were disrupted with literal flamethrowers coming from the television and setting the landscape on fire. The zombies, on fire, continued to walk towards you. Everything in sight was aflame, the smoke rising and obscuring the creature from my sight.

“Smart move, starting a signal fire, making the zombies more deadly, and eliminating cover all at once. Still, I can probably still survive.” You thought, though you were becoming less and less convinced at the probability of survival.

Hacking away a few zombies, you jumped over a burning branch and ran deeper into the smoke. The creature wouldn’t be able to see you, not through the smoke.

Vines struck all around you, and pulled the objects they grabbed towards the host. A flaming barricade was lifted, and a horde of zombies walked into the space you were in.

You tried to go back, but a white ninja star embedded itself into the sand, cutting off your escape.

Surrounded by zombies, some burning and some not burning, you hefted your sword and adjusted Sans’ comatose body on your back.

There was no more running away. You had to fight now.

Sweat ran down your cheeks and saturated your hair. Your heart began beating faster and faster, rising almost to your throat. You nervously shuffled, and your gaze flitted from zombie to zombie, trying to determine which one to strike first.

A shadow was cast behind you, and you spared a glance to see the abomination coming through the haze and smoke. It seemed unbothered by the flames.

“The fifth soul has arrived.” It gurgled. Flaming vines wriggled in the air as the animal head below the screen dripped the oil like substance all over the sand, the hands that formed from it grabbing at your legs. Taking a step back, you noticed that the zombies were uncomfortably close.

At this moment, you realized, you f***ed up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Will you die, or will the plot armor ex machina act up and save you from this mess?
> 
> I wonder.


	13. Blasting By a Boss Battle and Breaking Storyline Barriers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where you break the fourth wall and have it patched with science.
> 
> Oh, you also fight a sentient godly television for a while, along with a horde of zombies.
> 
> How bad could it be? You have plot armor.
> 
> Wait a second... 
> 
> I just broke my own fourth wall.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Violence, Violence, and violence.

It all came down to this.

Would one rather face off against a quarter of a god or a horde of burning zombies?

That, my friend, is a very good question.

Holding the white greatsword shakily, you looked at the advancing abomination and at the advancing little abominations behind you. Sans was still comatose, channeling his magic to teleport the people away.

That was it!

All you had to do was buy time!

You made a decision. That decision was to run into the horde of burning zombies. Scything down the two in front of you, you delved deeper into the horde. The god behind you fired another burst of flames, but the brunt of the attack was blocked by Sans’ jacket. Your legs felt the burn, both metaphorically and literally.

A zombie swung a flaming claw at you, which you blocked, and sent a kick into its abdomen. Falling backwards, it collapsed onto another zombie like a puppet with its strings cut. 

“Jeez. This is like a scene out of some anime.” you muttered.

You swung your blade in a wide arc and repelled another wave of zombies, then stepped on their corpses (Are zombies dead, or just insane humans infected with a mind altering parasite? Biology and psychology will never let us know.), subduing your attackers while running off into a fresh wave. More vines shot out behind you, but they were intercepted by the zombies staggering to their feet, the pseudo sentient bodies being dragged to their utter demise. You swore you could hear the abomination chewing on the poor souls (even if their souls already escaped their prison of a body).

“Clever move human. But I don't need these plastic soldiers to capture you.” the god giggled. White ninja stars once again appeared out of nowhere and mowed the zombies down like weeds. You lay flat on the floor to avoid the deadly blades separating you from your knees. The legless zombies dragged themselves towards you as the god-abomination-sentient TV thing crept closer somehow, pulling itself towards you via latching vines into the ground and pulling.

Seriously. Somebody needed to name that thing. Whoever wrote this disgusting telenovela of a story should probably stop being lazy, procrastinating, and not bother to come up with names for their own creations! And put them in crazy situations! What kind of author or god is up there giving us commands?

A weight fell from your back and projectiles suddenly whooshed through the air. The creature that the author was too lazy and incompetent to name shrieked in anger and sent vines at you, only for somebody to tackle you out of the way.

“done breaking the fourth wall yet? sometimes i have those thoughts too. the world seems too similar to a crappily written fanfiction sometimes, don’t you think? sadly, no experiments have been able to prove the existence of an author in this multiverse. the closest we have is a guardian.”

“Sans! How did it go?” you shouted in relief, kicking a struggling zombie away from you.

“those soldiers are probably back in ohio or something, confused as to why they mysteriously found themselves back with their families.” Sans said, summoning a barrier of bone to reflect a blast of fire followed by some bombs.

“Nice timing too. Another two seconds and I would have died. I guess you’re my plot armor, huh?”

“plot armor doesn’t exist. i’ve tested for foreign energy signatures on the kid that escaped from a mad spearwife and a killer robot, and everything came out negative. If that kid doesn’t have plot armor, you definitely don’t.” Sans said, summoning small bones out of the ground to impale the approaching zombies and black hands trailing from the gunk the god-sentient TV was oozing.

“Come on! You have to admit that it would be a nice concept!”

“it’s scientifically proven that luck and plot armor doesn’t exist. the closest one can get is probability manipulation, but it’s usually a passive skill and would be unpredictable.”

“Don’t be such a spoilsport! It would be nice to have a guaranteed happy ending.”

“news flash. not every story has a happy ending.” Sans said, firing a gaster blaster at the sentient television. It howled in pain and sent a laser beam back.

“Also why aren’t you teleporting us out of here?”

“can’t. flowey here bended the spacetime continuum so that i can’t teleport within a mile radius of him.”

“That thing’s name is Flowey?” you gasped as you kicked away another zombie, aghast at the generic name given to the half-god.

“yup. but i do have an idea.” Sans said.

“What?”

“this.” Sans said, snapping. Everything flashed black, and froze for a second. However, it returned to normal in a second, and Sans knelt, holding his head.

“it’s space-time continuum. I really am an idiot sometimes.”

You facepalmed as you stabbed another zombie in the head, and somersaulted out of the way of some more vines and a bomb.

With a wave of his hand, Sans’ eyes flashed blue and you were pulled away from Flowey. He summoned another sword as he chopped at the zombies clawing at your feet. Eventually, you were able to fly out the horde and into the foliage that escaped the ninja stars and the fire.

“he should have a hard time finding us now.”

“That thing has a GENDER?” you shouted.

“and now he knows where we are. Keep running. if i’m getting us away i’m not using any more magic.”

You sprinted away from the fire. Green and brown flashed by in your vision as you stumbled over roots and getting your face slapped by low branches. Still, with bloody marks over your face, you pushed on. Sans happened to be short enough so that he couldn’t actually be hit by any branches. Lucky bastard.

You ran and ran and ran…

Till you emerged in the courtyard of the lab.

Sans suddenly grabbed your shoulder and you teleported into the unknown.

After the familiar falling sensation, along with the feeling of being squeezed into a really tight tube, you emerged into a sea of black and silence.

Oh crap.

Where on Earth were you two now?


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another boss fight with scientific mumbo jumbo.
> 
> Have fun reading.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you all do me a favor and tell me how long it takes for a normal person to read this chapter?
> 
> For all of you still in high school, prepare for your AP exams or whatever they're a month away or something (as of 4/20/2020)

You fell onto the floor of wherever you were in. The sword you were holding onto clattered to the ground and hit your head on some sort of table in front of you.

Sans, clutching his abdomen and leaning on a wall, looked around. The white pinpricks that were his eyes darted around his eye socket in the dim environment.

“Where are we now? A dark room? Somebody’s basement?” You asked.

“we’re probably in the really secret experimental government lab”

“How do you know?”

Sans pointed at something behind you. Turning, you saw a yellow sign that said: “Authorized personnel only. This is property of the US government.” Below it, there was a printout that read :”Warning: Experimental technology.”

“Wow. Very subtle, government. What were they even doing?”

“making wormholes.”

“How do you know? If there’s another ex machina….”

Sans held out a research paper and pointed at the device. Sure enough, the title of the paper was about wormholes.

“GAAAHHH! Stupid ex machinas. It’s like the universe likes throwing me into life threatening situations.” You shouted.

“this thing doesn’t work. it’s just a hunk of metal, a waste of circuitry, and a misuse of semiconductors. for shame. i thought i could get something useful from this.”

Out of curiosity, you turned the electricity on, pulling on a heavy lever. A background generator hummed, and the lights in the lab came to life, the bulbs in the floor activating.

The machine looked like a sideways portal frame, very square. Above and below it were two metallic cones hosting what looked like a fusion reactor (which you had seen during your mechanical engineering courses back before the apocalypse.) It was a torus-shaped magnet hypercooled by liquid nitrogen that causes ionized hydrogen to fuse into helium, temporarily creating a substance that would have half the density of a neutron star.

“this machine wants to bend the spacetime continuum to achieve time travel and go back in time to stop world war two, according to a man named vermin supreme.”

“That doesn’t even make sense!”

“it’s not my fault vermin supreme is secretly running your human government. all of you though he was a meme until it was too late.”

The machines began shaking. Sparks began to fly as the very space began to bend, somehow drawing in nearby light. Exposed buttons began pressing themselves over the pressure, and the lights died, replaced by a red backup light. The very machinery itself creaked and groaned.

“by the stars? what else did you touch to turn the lights on?”

“I just flipped one switch that was labeled “Electricity Valve!”

“look at the button you’re leaning on right now.”

You looked at where your hand was. The protective casing had fallen off due to disuse and the possible destructive zombification of the local scientists.

“this is going to draw the attention of flowey or even him.”

“What can possibly be worse than confronting that abomination?”

“you know, it’s rude to talk about somebody who’s listening.” Sans said cryptically as the lights flickered. The beeping of machinery suddenly accelerated, and then stopped.

The lights died. The bend in space at the center of the room was the only source of light, flickering red and white, eerily echoing what had been going on in the world just now.

Then, another black light began shining through the warp. It was strange. It was almost as if the light emitted were darkness itself, casting unnatural black over the area. And black wasn’t even in the visible light spectrum.

“Oh, WDG-S1, N60. You clearly have surpassed all expectations. To think you survived so much, through the resets, the rampages of the mad god, and now through a human disease. This is the most fun I’ve seen in the human world since the Covid-19 outbreak.” a voice said from beyond the vail, radiating confidence and mirth, as if we were insignificant bugs.

“oh come on…” Sans muttered, “now i have to deal with this jerk again.”

Even if Sans’ carefree and slightly cocky words were spoken, you could see the visible distress. His eye lights were oddly wide and frayed, and his bones were clattering slightly. He slouched backwards and crouched lower like a cat. The fear was almost tangible. You subconsciously picked up the weapon again and prepared to strike down whatever it was.

“Foolish child, thinking you can strike down me. I have already transcended normal means of death. My soul, spread across time and space, is responsible for the very existence of a third dimension in terms of the spacetime continuum. Alas, this rip is too small and unstable for me to manipulate and create a physical body. Still, I can torment you and put on a good show for myself by beckoning the beast over here.”

“you sick manipulative bastard! i threw you into the core for a reason, gaster!”

“Feisty as always, Subject. You were surprisingly resilient, given that you were the weakest of your line. A joke, a test, to see how long the most pathetic prototype model of your magic makeup could survive. You have, indeed, pushed your limits.”

Just then, the ground rumbled. The lab’s walls began to cave as earth spilled in through the cracks in the metal infrastructure. The reactors began to power down, releasing energy that slammed you into the wall. Sans crossed his arms in front of his face to protect himself from the winds as a blue transparent vine (probably his blue magic) anchored him to the ground.

“Interesting use of magic. I will have to document it later. My time in the physical realm is once again over. Hope you enjoy my little gift!” the mysterious man cackled, and vanished as the bend in spacetime mended itself, pulling the room towards it. The unstable floor panels flew towards the reactors and broke the internal components.

Then, the monster finally arrived. Shifting the fallen walls off its face via vines, its demonic face laughed again, the noise echoing throughout the minuscule chamber. The tunnel to the facility was collapsed by the monster’s travels.

“and i can’t teleport long distance. just great.” Sans muttered. Summoning a blaster, he fired it at the creature, which pried itself off the walls and dodged the beam.

You threw the sword at Flowey, but it was deflected by another barrage of ninja stars. One flew towards you, but was stopped by a bone protruding out of the ground.

A wall of bones rose before you.

“stay back. you’re kinda out classed here.” Sans said, summoning another sword.

“And you aren’t?” You retorted

“done this before about seven hundred times. except in a more open area.”

A wave of fire burned across the field. Sans summoned a gaster blaster in front of him and fired back, disrupting the attack and forcing Flowey to dodge. Raising his hand, dozens of bones materialized and shot forth, hitting the monster and sending patches of decay over it, which quickly regenerated. Then, a volley of vines grew and shot themselves forward, making the cramped lab room a tangle of green, damaging, probably poisonous rope. Sans used his psychokinesis and created a shield of metal, and threw it at the beast. The panels clanged against the screen of the television and made the monster roar in pain.

Vines shot towards your bone cage. Sans hastily summoned a bone wall and ripped the vines, but while you were watching the exchange you didn’t notice the vines coiling itself onto your arm.

You only noticed when a vine coiled itself around your waist and you were pulled out of the wall and to the abomination. Flowey’s face was the last thing you saw before you closed your eyes, and prepared for what soul absorption felt like.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't get the coronavirus! It's definently not good for you.
> 
> At least it doesn't have an expiration date if you get it shipped from the nearest hospital.


	15. Monochrome

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Magical Combat!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Have fun reading!

Turns out, soul absorption was weird.

Screaming, you were dragged towards your demise, your fingers trying to find any blemish in the uneven ground to hold onto.

And then, everything went dark. You were free of the vines.

On one side of your vision, Sans stood, eye sockets narrow as he glared at his enemy with a cold and calculating look. An invisible wind made the leather jacket on him billowed out like a cape. You stood next to him, patting yourself down and realizing that you were truly free.

On the other side of your vision, the abomination floated in mid air. Another being floated behind him, resembling a cracked mask. Transparent white hands with holes in the palms and surrounded the creature, forming some sort of protective shell. An eerie red smiley face floated above the two.

Sans closed his eyes and raised his hands, and out of nowhere, ten blasters appeared. An array of bones sprung up and surrounded you, the white spikes pointing outwards menacingly.

Your supposed enemies prepared as well. The smiley face floated onto Flowey’s television screen. The creature convulsed, then shot vines to the border of whatever strange place they were in. More vines branched from the connective vines, two forming crude representations of arms and claws. More black substance dripped out of the creature’s various cavities, creating a lake of foul-smelling zombified parasites.

“if a menu bar appears, flee. i can’t risk you getting your soul separated from your body and fed to the beast.” Sans muttered. You shifted nervously.

The first barrage of attacks came. Bombs appeared out of the air (as if they were being drawn into reality itself pixel by pixel) and flew towards you. The first few were intercepted by the bone barricade, but after the defenses fell, you had to dodge the bombs. Sans grabbed you and dragged you out of the way of one, the cylinder of death almost hitting your right arm. Then, he pushed you over. You looked up to see a bomb passing right above you. Then, feeling a tug, you were dragged ten meters to the left as a bomb exploded where you were knocked over seconds ago.

The barrage ended, and Sans’ left eye lit up in blue flames. The blasters charged themselves with a hum and fired at the beast, which tried to shift out of the way. It managed to avoid half of the beams. The other half of the attack met resistance from the transparent hands that floated infront of the beast and took the brunt of the damage. Flowey’s wounds sealed themselves right after.

Suddenly, in front of you hovered a black box. On it were four options: Fight, Act, Item, or Mercy.

“choose mercy and select flee, if that’s an option. if not, you’re going to have to fight.” Sans whispered, not keeping his eye off the enemy. They were doing…. something.

You pressed the mercy button. There was no flee option.

Well, time to fight.

Pressing the button, some sort of aiming directory appeared in front of you. You waited till the attack indicator reached the center before throwing a piece of debris at the monster.

It didn’t do anything. It just cut one small supporting vine.

The creature laughed at the pathetic assault.

“turn based combat is over. it’s going to get a lot messier from here.” Sans said to you and took a stance, though with hands still in his pockets.

Flowey flung himself forward, swinging from the ceiling and approaching at a rapid pace. Sans grabbed your arm and glided backwards, summoning bones and cutting vines to disrupt the charge. The beast hissed in annoyance and sent a wave of fire over your heads. Sans snapped and the blasters fired again, making the creature recoil.

“quick. attack the television screen.” Sans said as he dragged you out of the way of a retalitating coil of vines.

“M-me?” you stuttered, pointing to yourself. Your attacks didn’t even affect the monster.

“it’s some weird rule of magical combat. only humans can flee when combating god class monsters, and that is if they don’t have the equivalent of six human and one boss monster soul. your attack is just going to be a distraction.”

You took something out of your pocket and threw it at the monster. The pint sized bottle of water struck the screen and split apart, the water inside spreading across the screen. The torn bottle clattered to the floor and was swallowed up by the goo. The beast blinked (somehow) stupidly in surprise.

Sans grabbed you, and you phased out of the strange area. The real world appeared once more. You were out of the beast’s clutches and you quickly ran to the other side of the room. Flowey fell over, writhing. You assumed he was disoriented.

Putting his fingertips on the ground, Sans closed his eye sockets. A stream of blue emanated from the appendages and latched onto the walls. The walls cracked and crumbled to reveal a narrow passageway that was a tunnel pointing upwards. You could distinctly see the light.

And instinctively, you did the thing you did best.

Run.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: We are approaching 1000 hits! Only about 200 more to go!
> 
> Thank you for reading this fic!


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter from these 10 days' writings. Working on other projects does take it out of you.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nothing really happens. It's just getting into Sans' tragic backstory and all that.
> 
> Also, nothing happens in Idaho.

Climbing up the tunnel was exhausting. After the intense fight, scrabbling up through the rough hewn passage. Pebbles and loose earth tumbled from the ceilings. The sides of the tunnel crumbled down, pebbles falling onto your head and torso. Behind you, the tunnel cracked and groaned. The sound of blasts whining in the air and vines growing(?) through the air. The scrape of rubber shoe soles on the lab floors sounded as Sans bought time for you to escape.

A roar of agony was heard, followed by the sound of flesh being impaled.

Then, the tapping of footsteps began, sounding from behind you. For a moment you panicked, but then you realised that flower-television monsters did not have feet that could generate that sound. You sighed in relief, and continued the long ascent. 

Another roar emanated from the lab, and the trembling of the earth intensified. You saw yourself being coated in blue and flung towards the exit.

You probably breached terminal velocity, if the blood rushing to your extremities as they trailed behind you during your impromptu flight was any indication. Sans followed, his jacket cushioning his falls as they did when deflecting those vines. You were gradually slowed down via another blue glow, thumping softly into a bush. Your vision was blurry because of the disturbed blood flow, and you stumbled out of the foliage and face planted into the dirt.

“Worst. Escape. Plan. Ever. Sans.” You groaned, rolling over and attempting to open your eyes.

“whatever. we’re alive. that’s what matters.”

Sans grabbed you once more and teleported away.

~~~~~

You fell onto a mattress.

A very dirty one.

There was no bedsheet. A greasy ball of sheets lay on the worn mattress. There was no bed frame. Just a mattress on a wooden floor. Beside it was a lamp. There was no lightbulb in it. Instead, there was a flashlight, which actually worked. To the left of the lamp was a desk, with blueprints scattered around it. On the desk was some sort of cube, which kept flaring blue and sending metaphorical(?) ripples through the air. A heap of trash lay in the corner of the room, filled with empty bottles of ketchup, more blueprints, and an empty plate with old dried tomato stains on it. How it wasn’t moldy was a great question.

You exited the little hut and saw a field of cattails growing on a lake, surrounded by a wooden wall. The sun was shining brightly and a sign read “Welcome to Idaho. Attractions:”. 

It was odd how there were no attractions in Idaho. Seriously, what even happens in Idaho?

Potato farming?

Leaving your poor knowledge of Idaho behind, you turned and saw some sort of entrance to a bunker beside the crudely made log cabin. It was held together mostly by gravity and a lot of metal rods shoved through the walls to keep the wood together.

Walking across the grass, you inspected the wooden walls. They looked firm enough to keep any zombies out. It wasn’t like there were basically no people here anyways.

Finding a comfortable chair on the “porch” of the log cabin, you prepared to sleep, enjoying the peace and the sun’s warm rays.

Teleporting from California to Idaho must have been a hell of a trip for Sans.

How did he even manage to go so far?

That was another question for another time.

Now? Sleep. Sleep was sounding really good.

~~~~~

Waking up, you saw Sans floating in mid air, picking water sausages off of the tipha plants. The plant based food floated onto a messy pile on a wide sheet of wax cloth.

“oh, hey. you’re awake.” Sans said, throwing a deformed water sausage out of the compound. It landed with a wet thud onto the highway that this fort was apparently near.

Sans drifted towards you and sat cross legged on the grass. Snapping his fingers, a workbench appeared, along with one of those gaster blasters. The blaster lay down on the table and closed its eyes. A scanning device appeared and a green laser was cast across the skull while Sans found an array of five syringes, glowing light blue, dark blue, green, yellow, and purple. The scanner beeped and Sans held up the yellow syringe and squeezed some of the substance into the left eye of the monster. It purred(?), making the whole work table shake with it. After a bit, the needle was extracted, and with a snap of his fingers, the beast disappeared, floating away in an array of white pixels. Another was summoned.

You decided to ask a question that had been bothering you for a while now.

“Why is it that you tell me about yourself, but never ask about me in return? Isn’t communication a two way street?”

Sans paused. The new blaster whined and tried to hide behind Sans’ body. Sans took on a faraway look as he placed the syringe down, seemingly looking at the treeline from across the highway.

“it’s… complicated.” He said, fidgeting with the syringe. The blaster gave an indignant whine of being ignored and tapped a light blue vial with its jaw, white pinpricks in black sockets giving a somewhat pointed look at Sans. When it realized that Sans was not paying any attention, it floated away into the field, disturbing the plants.

Sans then unceremoniously slipped away, leaving you with a disgruntled expression.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I mean seriously, what does?


	17. Discontinuation/Rewrite

Yeah, I really don't like doing this. I really hate discontinuing this, but I kinda need to.  
Frankly, this isn't my best work. On a whim, I began writing another fanfiction and posting it on fanfiction.net, and it was so much better than this. I'm going to need time to rewrite, but for now, you can settle your urges to read a pseudo action novel by reading another fic.

Link:https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13580851/1/Chasing-Light

It's a RWBY fanfic, because it's a world where more things come and kill you and there's an immortal demon woman trying to destroy humanity. You're a formerly blind person reincarnated into the world, where you are hunted down by these weird demon wolves and bears and you just don't know why so many things are trying to kill you.

It's ... interesting. And already has more readers than this one as of 6/8/2020.

This story will be updated... eventually. I will work on longer chapters and more dialogue and world building, so yeah.

Sayonara, people who like this kinda crappy fiction.


End file.
